Nobody credible is suggesting a 0 Covid outcome. You'd have to be either incredibly idealistic or naive to expect 0 deaths. However, it's not unreasonable (and I'm not for a second suggesting you're saying this, you make well observed points) to suggest that 9 months into this pandemic, our current national strategy is no different to what it was in March - it's currently, and largely as a result of some shambolic national management, a choice between 'protect the economy' or 'risk health'...
And the honesty really should be, but it won't, 'we were slow to prepare, we didn't understand the severity, we lost vital time early and have been catching up since and we still haven't got it right'.
It almost needs a reset. Lockdown again, get the rate low and then put measures in place (TTI, incentivise isolation, make space available to quaratine, virtual learning, hands, mask, distancing) to keep it low. But we are stuck now in this half way house of local lockdown, to push the economy while hoping to keep deaths down.
Had we prepared effectively in Jan, as many were pleading, we could be enjoying 'normality' now without this endless cycle of chat about which is the better option between two pretty damaging choices..
